Tuesdays with Morrie (Book and Movie Review by Bob Racine)

             Book by Mitch Albom, published by Random House, 1997

                            Movie: 1 hr & 29 min, color, 1999

                                     

“If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it.  They will look down on you anyhow.  And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it.  They will only envy you.  Status will get you nowhere.  Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”  One person who lived out this “open heart” principle magnificently and who authored these words was Morris Schwartz (known by his nickname Morrie), son of a Russian Jewish immigrant raised in the Bronx, and college professor/author/activist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, who taught Sociology there for almost thirty years before he died of ALS in 1995 at age 78.  He might not have gained much of a reputation if not for a former student of his named Mitch Albom, who spent many hours with him during the last few months of his life and recorded extensive conversations with him at his deathbed. 

                                     

The book I am reviewing is a derivation from those meetings and share sessions between professor and student, one that has racked up enormous circulation over the subsequent years, won rave reviews and been translated into several foreign languages.  My guess is that most of you reading this have at least heard of it.

                                     

The movie under consideration, adapted from that book, was made for showing on television and stars Jack Lemon in one his finest portrayals.  Until a few months ago, I was one of those who had only heard of the non-fictional book without ever immersing myself in it.  That immersion has finally taken place and occupied much of my time over the last several weeks.  I have nothing but the highest praise for Albom’s writing and was moved considerably by the film, which did a commendable job of capturing the book’s highlights without trying to be exhaustive of its details in the limited hour and a half.

                                     

Albom, a successful sports writer working out of Detroit, may have done the most to lionize the man, but Ted Koppel deserves much of the credit, featuring the dying Morrie on his “Nightline” telecast.  Mitch had had no contact with his former professor (whom he called Coach) in sixteen years, when he happened to catch Koppel’s show and learned of the older man’s fatal illness.  It was under those somewhat grim circumstances that teacher and pupil were reunited.

                                      

The relatively short book may be a quick read, but its simplicity is deceiving, for inside its pages volumes of redeeming insights about human living and spirituality can be unearthed.   “Study me in my slow and patient demise” was Morrie’s invitation to Mitch, accepting without hesitation the use of Mitch’s tape recorder.  The stricken man’s operating principle was expressed in this statement: “Death should not be embarrassing.”  It should not be tidied up.  He was not about “to powder its nose”.  Morrie was noted for his many aphorisms, one of which is repeated in several instances: “Once you learn the way to die, you learn how to live.”  Another: “Aging is growth, not decay!”   The two men actually scheduled their sessions together to take place on Tuesdays.  They discuss personal subjects like family, fear, marriage, love, forgiveness, self-pity, looking back and regretting, and of course death.  They also take on the world at large and the culture – a topic about which Morrie had strong antagonistic feelings and fearsome advice.    

                                     

Please do not get the idea that the book is dry and scholarly.  It is anything but that.  Morrie is a very charismatic person with a lively sense of humor and you could call him the consummate extrovert.  He was constantly smiling.   He had friends by the droves, and during his closing months of consciousness he invited them into his house daily; Mitch was only one of many.  He admits in one place that he had had more visitors since he received “his death sentence” than he did before.  Perhaps his most striking remark in the comic vein was his anticipation of being so helpless that eventually “someone’s gonna have to wipe my ass”.   And according to Mitch he did not dominate a conversation.  “He was a wonderful listener.”

                                     

He absolutely refused to be shown overt sympathy.  He wanted visits, not people paying last respects.  He had absolutely no self-consciousness or shame about his helpless condition.  To one guest as quickly as another he would say, “I have to pee.  Would you mind helping me?”  He even set up his own funeral to take place before his passing, with him present and hearing all the obituaries for himself.  He loved music, and he loved dancing in all styles and forms.  The movie’s opening scene, set at an earlier date before his health collapsed, has him walking into a nightclub by himself and actually performing on the dance floor, behavior that apparently made those present regard him as an oddball curiosity, hardly an academic, though judging by the scene they rather took to him.  

                                     

There is an autobiographical aspect to the writing.  We learn a great amount about Mitch.  The trajectory of his young life between college and late thirties is another feature that delivers the teacher/pupil encounter from being a stiff intellectual or rhetorical exercise.  Mitch is something of a musician.  An uncle of his was the one who picked up on his talent, an uncle who died in the prime of life, causing him much grief.  He tried first to create a career as a pianist, but he grew tired of playing solo in one night spot after another and for so little remuneration and finally decided to enter graduate school, where he obtained a Masters in Journalism.  There he fell under the influence of Morrie Schwartz, who became his mentor.  Morrie inspired his thesis writing and at graduation Mitch promised his teacher that he would keep in touch.  Morrie made it quite clear to Mitch that he considered the young man very special.  But over the following sixteen years he and Morrie had no contact whatsoever until Mitch learned of the ALS.  Mitch had to deal with the upsurge of guilt he felt over not keeping that promise to his old Coach.  Their reunion is very touching to read on the printed page and to watch and embrace in the film.  The tie they had created turned out to be as strong as ever, due primarily to Morrie’s keeping it so.  

                                     

The two men considered the Tuesday contacts to be the final course the student would ever take under his old Prof.  The book that they both knew was to emerge from these tapes was considered a final thesis.  I must confess to some envy of Mitch.  I cannot say that I have ever experienced any mentor relationship anywhere near like it.  There have been a few older clerics that I have looked up to during my momentary interactions with them, but nothing has ever bound me to any of those men the way Mitch discovered he was still bound to Morrie Schwartz.

                                     

Morrie had strong negative feelings about the contemporary world.  He saw modern folk as people in too big a hurry to learn how to live with any kind of serenity.  “The culture does not make people feel good about themselves.”  He commiserated over people hung up on the false notion that more is better – more and more money, more and better houses, etc.  Mitch had been living just such a hectic life, flying from one part of the country or the world to another to cover the latest sports event, living out of his suitcase, doing five or six things at one time in one breath.  Morrie, without personal pressure, slows him down just by being who he is.  As Mitch puts it, “I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.”  Not until the Tuesdays began!  

                                     

Mitch, portrayed in the film by Hank Azaria, is married to a young woman named Janine, portrayed by Wendy Moniz.  One moment in the book that I am so pleased is acted out in the movie has Mitch bringing Janine with him on one of his Tuesday visits, in response to a specific request from Morrie.  The dying man learns with exceeding delight that the young woman is a professional singer, and he appeals to her to sing a song for him.  Mitch is at first embarrassed, thinking that Janine is being put on the spot and that she will politely refuse, as is her habit.  But she belts out “The Very Thought of You”, an old Ray Noble love tune, and the song puts a smile on the professor’s face that combines with tears of joy and apparent recollection of his own early love life.  (He and wife Charlotte, still alive and supportive of him, have been married for over forty years.)  A most tender and cheerful scene!   

                                     

Though Mitch’s affection for Morrie is indisputable, he is not simply the Yes Man for all that flows from his teacher’s lips.  Mitch is a searcher, and even as late as his final goodbye to the shrunken man he still cannot accept the death he is observing as a positive gift to him.  He is still in silent, subtle rebellion against death’s inevitability, and he is somewhat repressed emotionally; he seems incapable of tears, one fact that has always caused Morrie some concern.  But the book is written with a soft pen, and the reader knows without a doubt that the author has experienced some degree of transformation out of all he has absorbed from his beloved Coach.  He lets Morrie shine through without obstruction, and for that we can all be glad.  Read and weep!  Read and smile!

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.